“What if we lose?” I asked, thinking about how I’d done in the tournament. Not terrible, but not great either. “Do we move back up?”
“For losing one fight? No. Lose two back-to-back, however, and you move back up a level. Lose four in a row, and you’re cut off from the Dragons.” He eyed us sidelong. “The tournament to get in was your easy ride. From here on out, it’s sink or swim. On the other fin, wins will be rewarded with more than just nicer rooms. If your fights get selected for our Prison League Fighting broadcast, you’ll get a cut of every sponsorship for each aired fight you win.”
Warcry’s red-brown eyebrows jumped up at that. Then he must’ve realized he was showing something besides anger, because he twisted his face back into a scowl.
“How big a cut?” he asked. “And is it outta the net or total?”
“Net,” Biggerstaff said, ignoring the rest of Warcry’s question. “Once you’ve got twenty wins under your belt, you’ll be considered full members of the Dragons, and you’ll receive your assignments, along with your Eight-Legged Dragon healing script tattoo.”
“You mean we won’t have nothing keeping us from bleeding to death during the fights?” Warcry growled.
“I do mean that.” Biggerstaff checked his HUD. “Let’s walk while we talk. I’m almost out of time for orientation.”
We headed back to the elevators.
“You won’t have healing during your fights,” the recruiter said. “You’ll be as helpless as most people outside our organization, which is to say, ordinary folk. Too many hooligans rely on their tattoos to heal them. Imagine your tattoo arm gets cut off during a fight, and your healing’s gone. Are we supposed to hope the Dragon we invested so much in can suddenly shift to self-preservation after years of letting the script deal with it? Needless to say, if you get killed during your tower fight, you’re not getting inducted posthumously.”
Obviously, he thought that was pretty clever, because he croaked that catfish laugh.
The elevator doors opened, and we climbed back on. Biggerstaff pushed the button for Level 12.
“Like I said, provisionary Dragons aren’t allowed in the luxury of rooms on floors they haven’t earned.” He eyed us. “So, no sneaking into your pretty little friend’s guest suite. Believe me, we will know, and you’ll be walking yourself right back through the bogs to wherever you came from. You are allowed in all common areas, however—walkways, lobbies, and elevators, as well as the market court, stores, locker rooms, and the arena.”
The floors flashed by as our car dropped. It came to a stop on the bottom floor.
As soon as we stepped out, the rumble of conversations and the smell of sizzling meat and spices hit us. We were on the fountain court level. My mouth watered, and my stomach rumbled as we passed restaurant stalls and fighters packing heaping plates of food to tables. A couple days in the bogs with nothing but AlgaeFrize had really given me a hankering for something hot and not made of algae, but Biggerstaff didn’t even slow down.
“This is the market court,” he said, cutting through the tables. “You’ll get three meal allowances per day. If you’ve got the money, you can supplement that however you choose.”
Around the edges of the central dining area, hallways lined with stores shot off like the spokes of a wheel. He took off down one and stopped in front of a glass storefront with a hologram of a dragon made of smoke curling and clawing at the window.
“The Smoking Dragon, our distillery,” Biggerstaff said. “Like meals, you’ll get an allowance of healing elixirs—five per week. Anything more than that comes out of your own pocket, so if you’re broke, be judicious about how you apply them. If you’re not broke yet, be smart or you will be broke in no time. Our master distiller is one of the best, and she doesn’t come cheap.”
Abruptly, Biggerstaff turned back toward the fountain court. Warcry and I hustled to follow him.
“Elixirs aside, you’re not required to fight every day,” he explained. “You can take up to two days off between fights to recover. Go over that, and you’ll be penalized a loss per absentee day.” He looked from me to Warcry. “We’re not here just to assess how much punishment you can take. This isn’t some small-time backwater. The Eight-Legged Dragons are the strongest gang of the Big Five, and we want to keep it that way. Show us how smart you can be with what you’ve got, not how much healing you can soak up on our credits.”
Instead of heading for the elevators, Biggerstaff turned us down another hall and through a set of double doors.
We came out in the top row of an arena. The stands were laid out like the Jade City kokugikon, with boxes lined with seating cushions and surrounded by low railings. Instead of a series of fight cages down at the center, though, there was just a large open dirt floor. A neon yellow guy was being dragged off the floor, bleeding bright green blood, while a shark guy raised his hands in triumph.
“Winner—Cutshine!” an ecstatic female voice shouted over the speaker system. “Eleven wins, six losses!”
Some of the crowd cheered, some of it booed, but nobody seemed as hyped about the whole thing as the crowd at the Wilderness Territorial had been. They kind of sounded bored.
The shark guy left, and two new
